My roommate Gustavo went by the nickname Goose, and could’ve easily gone by Wild Goose because of his hell-raising nature. When he wasn’t talking shit he was starting shit, and always with the cojones to back it up. Kind of like his Pit Bull Chorizo: lots of bark and lots of bite. Or like his white GMC pickup, which he named Blanca. It’s not just pets that take after their owners; Blanca had balls just like he did, and she used to rumble through the neighborhood and set off all the car alarms like she was looking for trouble.
What a greaser, huh? That was his catchphrase. Whenever he was done peeling out of a cantina parking lot or pounding some guy’s face in, he always punctuated it with the same four words: What a greaser, huh? He was a grease monkey so self-applying a slang term for a mechanic made sense, but he didn’t exactly fit the overall description of a stereotypical greaser. Those guys listened to doo-wop and dressed like Fonzie from Happy Days, but Goose dressed like a lumberjack and listened to rock en español at unacceptable volumes, which to my ears meant any level above slightly-audible.
The only thing Goose had in common with guys like The Fonz was gear-headedness. He was always going on about what Blanca had under the hood, which sounded like Klingon to me. “426 Hemi block” this, and “dual quad barrel intake” that—I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. All I knew is that whenever I rode shotgun and he would hit the gas, my head would snap back like a Pez Dispenser. Sometimes I’d get my bell rung to boot. His bench seats didn’t have headrests so if he punched it extra hard then wham! my head would jerk back and I’d slam my crown against the rear window.
His lead foot was just as heavy on the brakes. If I wasn’t suffering from a mild dose of whiplash or minor head trauma, I would be catching a case of seat belt syndrome. That’s what happens when you get bruises and abrasions on your torso from seat belt trauma. Goose was such an aggressive tailgater that every time he slammed on the brakes to avoid plowing into the car in front of us, the seat belt would clench my torso and mangle my man titties the way underwear mangles buttcheeks during an atomic wedgie. One time I ended up with a mark so big it looked like I had a third nipple. “Buckle up for safety,” I would say. “And lesions.”
Goose and I were living in Pacific Beach, California at the time, in the early aughts. We shared a dumpy little apartment in a shitty complex but it was P.B. so we had no complaints. The complex housed about seven units and the parking lot was located behind our building so we had to drive down an alleyway to access it. One day we were returning from the beach and we noticed a horde of pigeons gathered around a puddle in the middle of the alleyway. Goose’s eyes lit up like a jack-a-lantern and he floored it. “I’m gonna nail ‘em!” he shouted and I got my dome rattled as the truck roared back and barreled down the alley like a freight train.
I winced as the pigeons scattered in a frenzy, hoping they would avoid Blanca’s wrath, but just as I was about to breathe easy, we heard a loud thud! “I got one!” yelled Goose, and I half-expected the bird to pop off the grill and smack against the windshield with his wings spread and his face all twisted like in a cartoon, but it didn’t.
“What a greaser, huh?” said Goose as we parked and got out of the truck to have a look. We spotted the pigeon by a dumpster about forty yards away, stumbling around in a daze like an old drunk.
“Check him out,” said Goose. “He’s trying to get his bearings back.” Goose started dubbing the scene, using a heavy Mexican accent to imitate the bird’s voice. “‘ey, did anybody get the license plate number on that pickup truck?”
Another pigeon returned and landed. It approached the wounded bird with apparent concern.
“That’s his homeboy right there,” Goose surmised and he started dubbing again, using the same voice for both birds.
“Dang, Oscar. They fucked you up, huh?”
“Who is that?”
“It’s me, Oscar.”
“Wassup, Oscar.”
“No, you’re Oscar. I’m Danny.”
“Wassup, Manny.”
“No, it’s Danny. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Like three.”
“We don’t have fingers, Oscar. That was a trick question.”
The healthy bird suddenly turned its back and took flight, and Goose actually had the nerve to call it out. “Hey, don’t bounce, ese!” he yelled. “You’re just gonna peace out on your boy like that?”
We watched the pigeon fly away and when I looked back down at the injured bird, I felt a deep sense of sorrow. It just stood there, abandoned, staring at a cinder block wall in silent pain.
“We should help it,” I said.
“It’s a pigeon,” he sneered.
“Maybe it’s a female, and maybe that was her husband that left. Don’t they mate for life? You could’ve just broken up a happy marriage.”
“Plenty o’ pigeons in the sky,” he said before he went inside to feed his pet beast Chorizo.
A few weeks later we were driving around and we spotted a couple of girls from the neighborhood walking down the sidewalk, Dolores de Llano and her roommate Sylvia Portillo. Dolores was the fire in my chones back in those days. I was wildly obsessed with her, and the mere sight of her used to send me into a tizzy, even from a distance.
“There’s your girlfriend,” said Goose as we drove up from behind. I started fidgeting and he grabbed my arm. “Relax, man. Just lean out the window and say wassup.” I took off my seat belt and grabbed the door handle like I was going to jump out of the moving vehicle. “Play it cool,” he insisted. I took a deep breath and lowered the window. When Blanca rolled up and the girls turned around to look at us, I leaned on the car door and delivered a smooth and seductive “Hey there, ladies.” At least that’s how I had drawn it up in my head. In reality, I got as far as “Hey—” before Goose slammed on the brakes and wham! I went smashing into the dashboard and windshield like a crash test dummy. As I crumbled into the footwell on my knees, I could hear the women screaming with laughter. It sounded like three women and when I looked up I realized it was Goose that was cackling along like a third hyena. “I’m sorry, man,” he managed to muster between guffaws, “Some fuckin’ kid ran out into the street.”
My head was throbbing. “I think I have a concussion. And I hear honking.” A white dude in a dually was laying on his horn behind us and Goose told him to go around but the guy kept honking. “I’ll be right back,” said Goose with a measured tone before he stormed out of the truck.
I didn’t see the fight because my bell was still ringing but from what I was told it wasn’t much of a fight. The guy must have played for the San Diego Gulls or something because right away, he pulled Goose’s flannel over his head “hockey-style” and dropped him to the ground with a kneecap to the face before peeling out of there in his one-ton pickup. The girls were in the street tending to Goose when I finally made my way out of the vehicle. His nose was bleeding and you could almost see little pigeons circling his head like in a cartoon. “You okay, Goose?” I asked, raising my right hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Six?”
“Let’s get him into the truck and over to the clinic,” said Delores, then pointed at me. “You, too. I’ll drive.”
Later at the clinic, they reset Goose’s broken nose and splinted it, which resulted in hyponasal speech. When he came out into the hall and said What a greaser, huh? he sounded like Miley Cyrus. I suffered a little vertigo but other than that, I was good. I didn’t even wig out when we stepped out into the waiting area and saw Delores sitting with Sylvia. “You guys didn’t have to wait for us,” said Goose.
“We have Blanca,” replied Sylvia.
“You know Blanca?”
“You told us to take Blanca and go feed Chorizo, remember?”
“Not really.”
“You guys fed Chorizo?” I asked Delores, slightly shocked.
“We did,” she answered with a smile. “He’s a sweetheart. How’s your head?
“It’s fine.”
“And you’re tummy?” interrupted Sylvia.
“My tummy?”
“We’re starving. Let’s go eat!”
We had an early dinner at a charming beach cafe and then followed that up with a leisurely stroll along the boardwalk. What started as a rough afternoon had definitely softened into a lovely night under the stars with the ocean susurrating in the background, but unfortunately, the romanticism would only cast its magic spell on one couple that evening. Dolores and I didn’t hook up happily ever after like my dreams had promised (it turned out she only dated white guys), but Goose and Sylvia were like a young Frida and Diego. That bucket of whoop-ass that got poured all over him like a Gatorade shower must have really humbled the guy (or maybe he had amnesia) because he was not the same greaser as before. One month with Sylvia and he was already shacking up with her so I had to get a place of my own (it was more of a rat-hole than a place but it was a block from the beach so no complaints). A few months down the line, he recruited me to dog-sit Chorizo while they ran off to Mexico for a week and he even left me the keys to Blanca. I thundered around town with Chorizo riding shotgun but it didn’t make me feel chingón or anything, just kinda sad and lonely. On the drive home, I startled a flock of pigeons and it reminded me of that busted-ass pigeon that took that chingaso in the alleyway earlier that summer. I wondered if any of the others had come back for him, or if he had just gone it alone. Poor bastard. He didn’t know what hit him. I’ve seen seagulls by themselves at the beach and they never look nervous or uncomfortable like pigeons. In fact, they always seem confident, almost proud and majestic, looking all nautical and shit standing on those wooden posts at the pier that have rope tied around them. They always seem to know, and never seem to struggle.
